Lady Jenny's Christmas Portrait

worried for me, for my safety perhaps?”

Did nobody ever worry for her? Or did she never allow her loved ones to know what she was really about?

“You were safe as houses on the streets of Mayfair in broad daylight, even when you went sauntering down St. James Street in your masculine regalia at midafternoon.” That had been naughty of her—also brave.

“One wants to see more than candlelit ballrooms and sunny bridle paths, Mr. Harrison. What I saw was a clutch of dandies lounging in the windows of the men’s clubs, pretending a perfectly prosaic street scene somehow merited their devoted study. They reminded me of the lions at the menagerie—tame, twitchy, bored, and helpless to address their own miseries.”

Her description was deadly accurate. “I noticed you did it only the once.”

“One need not… I wasn’t doing it to be daring. I wanted to see. Why were you worried for me?”

Afternoon tea should have been an occasion for some flirtation, a little sustenance, and maybe—if he flirted well and she were receptive—a bit of sketching. Elijah wasn’t sure what to call their exchange, but it was not flirting.

“You never fraternized with the other students, never arrived or left with them. You never joined in the stupid, self-conscious banter that ensues when young men are in the presence of nudity.”

She was regarding him with carefully masked bewilderment. He forged on, driven by motivations he was not going to examine closely unless thoroughly drunk.

“When one is talented, particularly early in one’s career, one can suffer doubts. In my experience, the doubts can be commensurate with the talent rather than inversely proportional to it. The myth of the sensitive artistic disposition is not entirely false, and I didn’t want…”

What was he saying? What was he babbling?

She picked up his uneaten slice of bread and held it out to him. “You did not want the quiet, withdrawn, somewhat talented student to doubt himself—herself—to the point of loss of confidence or foolish actions.”

He took the bread and stuffed a large bite into his idiot mouth. Lady Sindal’s recipe was scrumptious, and it went down like so much sawdust.

Lady Jenny held up his teacup. He washed the sawdust down with bilge water.

“Thank you, Mr. Harrison. Nobody has ever worried for me like that, and I suspect nobody ever will. Instead, they pity me. I prefer your worry to their pity, though I must apologize for giving you concern. I thank you, but I apologize too.”

The smile she offered him now was not that of a minx. They had shared secrets of a sort, it said—more secrets than she’d known—and she was pleased it was so. The silence that descended was profound. No clock ticked; no fire roared. Outside, the frightful weather had subsided to a cold, still winter day.

Inside, something expanded in Elijah’s chest—relief, happiness, he cared not what the best description might be, because words did not move him, and yet, words were necessary too.

“Lady Jenny, may I sketch you?” Those words were close but not exactly right, so he tried again. “Genevieve Windham, may I please sketch you?”

Four

Jenny had spoken with her brother-in-law, Joseph, Lord Kesmore, about Elijah Harrison, and Joseph had been wonderfully forthcoming. Mr. Harrison was heir to a marquessate, had studied abroad before and after his years at university, and was known for napping among the potted palms at Society’s evening gatherings.

She’d seen Elijah Harrison on occasion, through the door of the card room, and wondered how bored one had to be to sleep at a Society function—or how confident of oneself.

“You’ve already sketched me, Mr. Harrison, and a fine likeness it was. Why would you want to sketch me again?” A fine, passionate, curvaceous likeness, to hear Louisa tell it—and Louisa was seldom wrong.

He rose and took a candle from the branch on the mantel. “Darkness approaches while I stuff myself with your excellent holiday bread. It’s time to light the fire, don’t you think?”

In moments, he had a cheery blaze going, moments in which Jenny became preoccupied studying the curve of his haunch under his doeskin breeches. She’d seen those flanks in the buff and knew the way his back flowed into his hips, thighs, and buttocks in perfectly proportioned bones, muscles, and sinews.

She did not know what it felt like to caress that same part of his anatomy.

He resumed his seat, managing to look regal despite his dishabille and the makeshift surrounds. “You ask why I want to sketch you a second time, my lady, and I’ll answer with a question. Would you like to sketch me again?”

“Of course.”

She should not have said that. She should have traced the seam of the chair’s upholstery, glanced out the window at the sinking sun, and otherwise affected a sophistication she didn’t have.

Though her attempts at posturing hadn’t worked well with him so far.

“You’ve already captured my likeness, so why bother sketching me again, Genevieve?”

He started his own fires, and he used her name without permission. He fell asleep in Society drawing rooms and saw her as a woman of curves and passion. She resented his self-assurance mortally, and she wanted to remain near him, for all manner of hopeless reasons.

“I would like to sketch you again, Mr. Harrison, because you have an unconventional beauty that I can understand better by sketching.”

“If we are to pose for each other, you should call me Elijah.”

“No, I should not.” He was going to pose for her again, though, which meant she smiled when she should have been shaking her finger at him.

He appeared oblivious to the cold, while Jenny wanted to move closer to the fire. “Antoine was old-fashioned. All of that Mr. Harrison this and Mr. Harrison that when I was lounging about in the altogether wasn’t to protect my delicate sensibilities.”

“I doubt you have delicate sensibilities.”

He went on as if she hadn’t spoken, though now he was also trying not to smile. “His insistence on manners toward a naked man was intended to ensure all those puppies treated their own models decently. Modeling is grueling, often chilly work. The pay is lousy, and there’s an assumption…”

His almost-smile faded. A log fell in a shower of sparks.

“There’s an assumption that models and prostitutes are interchangeable,” Jenny said. If he could use words like “naked man” and “in the altogether,” she could manage “prostitute.”

Though not without blushing.

“Stay there,” he said, springing to his feet, crossing the room, and rummaging on a table in the shadowed corner. “Sit there, just like that. I’ll trade you double minutes, in fact, if you indulge me.”

“Double minutes?”

He returned to the fire with a sketch pad, pencil, eraser, and knife. “I’ll sit to you for an hour if you sit to me for thirty minutes.” He dragged his chair closer. The chair was old-fashioned, the sort of carved monstrosity popular back before Cromwell’s nonsense. It would have served better as a battering ram than an article of furniture, and Elijah Harrison moved it around one-handed. Easily.

“Do we have an agreement, Genevieve?” He dragged the chair another few inches closer, so they were sitting quite cozily indeed.

“If I get double minutes, then yes, Mr. Harrison, though I must warn you that inactivity is foreign to my nature.”

Particularly when Elijah Harrison was sitting knee to knee with her, and the urge to jump up and leave the room battled with the more compelling urge to shape the contour of his knee with her bare hand.

* * *

Harold Buchanan gestured to the pile of documents on the table. “We have the usual assortment of dabblers, sycophants, and eccentrics among the predictable slate of Associates.”